AUDIT Arizona is a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to restore public ownership and oversight of elections, work to ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote, and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently audited election process.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

"Attorney General Terry Goddard's office is counting the ballots as part of his criminal investigation into allegations the votes were flipped to show the opposite of voters' wishes.

Each and every ballot is being counted, though the count is going slower than expected, Goddard said Tuesday. Initially, his office thought the counters could get through 16 boxes of ballots per day, but on Monday they completed just five boxes, he said. Goddard is bringing in more people to count the ballots, and now hopes to reach a 12-box daily average.

Most of the 105 boxes moved from secured storage in Pima County to the Maricopa County Elections Division probably contain ballots, said Anne Hilby, spokeswoman for Goddard. The rest likely contain other election-related materials, she said."

The problem here is: 1) Terry Goddard hasn't exactly been a proponent of election integrity as he repeatedly refused to do his job in investigating allegations of fraud, (even after receiving a signed affidavit) and even went so far as to say he had no authority and 2) Chain of custody has been broken - why move the ballots from a secured location in Pima to Maricopa under insecure, nontransparent circumstances, having a private meeting with the judge to seize them, and then counting them in the county with the worst election integrity issues instead of where the process could be more transparent and tightly controlled? It makes it pretty easy to switch out ballots.

This count will resolve NOTHING, regardless of the outcome, because the process is as insecure as when the Pima Elections Department had Access hooked up to the election machines giving easy access to flip the votes. It is easy to suspect this is all just another pivot, smoke and mirrors tactic to make the public think their elections are secure as election fraud will continue in Arizona.

Of course Goddard knows this, but keeping the public in the dark is what they do best.